Redirect Budget

Redirect budget refers to the limited number of redirect hops that search engine crawlers and browsers will follow before abandoning a URL chain. Google Search Central states that Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops in a chain of multiple redirects, and advises keeping chains to no more than three redirects, and fewer than five in any case (as of August 2026). Each additional hop adds latency for users, and not all user agents and browsers support long redirect chains. Google also notes that long redirect chains have a negative effect on crawling. For URL shortening services, redirect budget is a critical design constraint. Every short URL already consumes one redirect hop. If the destination itself redirects (common with tracking parameters or CMS routing), the total chain length grows. Services should minimize internal redirect chains and warn users when destinations already contain multiple redirects.